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Lindbergh Kidnapping

2020/6/29
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This chapter discusses Charles Lindbergh's rise to fame as an aviator and his influence on the aviation industry, setting the stage for the high-profile kidnapping of his son.

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This week's case is a story that was submitted by one of our very own Forensic Tales listeners, Connie. If you want to have us cover a case on an upcoming episode of the show, you can email me directly at Courtney at ForensicTales.com. We can also connect on Instagram at Forensic Tales or on our website ForensicTales.com.

This case has rocked the true crime and forensic science community for nearly eight decades. The story not only inspired dozens of novels over the years, but has also helped to create blockbuster movie films. It's become one of the United States' most infamous kidnappings even to this day.

This week on Forensic Tales, we're covering the Lindbergh kidnapping. ♪

Welcome to Forensic Tales. I'm your host, Courtney. Each Monday, we release a new episode that discusses real, bone-chilling true crime stories and how forensic science has been used in the case.

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Charles Lindbergh was born on February 4th, 1902 in Detroit, Michigan. He was the son of immigrant parents from Sweden and his father actually became a US congressman in 1907 when Charles was about five years old. Charles's mother was a chemistry teacher at a local high school in Detroit, a school that Charles would go on to become a student at himself.

From a very young age, Charles knew that he always wanted to fly airplanes. He wanted to become a pilot. In February 1922, he decided to drop out of college where he was studying mechanical engineering so that he could enroll at the Nebraska Aircraft Corporation's Flying School.

Charles was about to fly for the very first time on April 2nd, 1922. And just a few days later, he took his first formal flying lesson. But shortly after starting the lessons, he ran into a little bit of a problem. He didn't have enough money. And in order to fly by himself, he needed to be able to pay for the damage bond or the insurance.

So Charles started taking different jobs. At one point, he worked as a wing walker. At another point, he worked as an airplane mechanic. He was doing anything he possibly could to save up money for these flying lessons. And by May 1923, Charles completed his first solo flight. And just one week later, he completed his first solo cross-country flight.

In March 1924, Charles enrolled in the U.S. military and began training with the United States Army Air Service, in which he was working to become a military pilot. And in 1924 is actually when he had his most serious flying accident, when there was the mid-air collision that basically caused him to bail out of his airplane.

Charles graduated at the top of his class in the military in March 1925, and he earned his army's pilot wings. In 1927, at just the age of 25 years old, Charles gained overnight fame when he won the Orteig Prize for making a non-stop flight from New York City to Paris.

He completed this 33-hour flight by himself in a single-engine airplane. Now, even though this wasn't the first ever solo transatlantic flight, it was the first transatlantic flight to be done between two major cities in the world, which back in the 1920s, this was a huge step forward in the field of aviation.

This achievement for aviation really helped to spur interest not only in commercial flights, but it also created a boom in the air mail across the country, which totally revolutionized the aviation industry for the years to come.

After Charles' flight from New York City to Paris, the New York Times reported in one of their articles, quote, people are behaving as though Lindbergh had walked on water, not flown over it, end quote. Countless newspapers, radio shows, magazines wanted to interview Charles Lindbergh, and he was receiving job offer after job offer.

Everyone with an aviation department or in need of a pilot wanted Charles Lindbergh. It was as if Charles Lindbergh became the most famous person in the country practically overnight. Charles Lindbergh was promoted to the rank of colonel in the U.S. Army in July 1927.

Then, in December of that same year, a special act of Congress awarded Charles the Medal of Honor. And this was a huge deal because normally the Medal of Honor is only reserved for acts of heroism in combat.

Times Magazine recognized Charles as Man of the Year in January 1928, while he was still just 25 years old. And to this day in 2020, he remains the youngest person ever coined Man of the Year. After his flight from New York City to Paris, the Lindbergh boom in aviation officially began.

The amount of U.S. mail that was being delivered via air increased by nearly 50% just within six months. Applications for pilot license tripled. And the number of planes in the United States practically quadrupled. So, needless to say, Charles Lindbergh really was the one to light the fire and spark on American aviation.

In his mid-20s, Charles met a woman by the name of Anne Morrow. Anne was actually the daughter of Dwight Morrow, who at the time was a bigwig at J.P. Morgan. And Dwight Morrow basically acted as a financial advisor to Charles.

So Charles and Anne met in Mexico City in December 1927, and they were married by May of 1929. The couple got married in Englewood, New Jersey, and together they would go on to have six children together. Charles Augustus Jr., John Morrow, Landmorrow Lindbergh,

Anne, Scott, and Reeve Lindbergh. When the Lindbergh children were young, Charles wasn't around very much. It was reported that he would only see his children for a couple months during the year, and that was pretty much it. But Charles was still a very strict parent to his six children.

Even though he was away for most of the year, he would personally keep track of every single one of his children's infractions, including things like chewing gum. And he was also known to expect that his wife, Anne, would keep track of every single penny that the family spent. Charles Augustus Lindbergh Jr. was the first child born in the family in 1930.

By the year 1932, when Charles Jr. was around 20 months old, the Lindberghs were living in the very small New Jersey township of East Amwell. Now, East Amwell is a small town. And when I say small, the population just a few years ago was about 4,000 people. So back in the early 1930s, I would imagine it was a lot less than that.

Because of Charles Lindbergh's status and fame, the Lindbergh family were doing quite well for themselves. They lived in a beautiful home in East Amwell, and they were able to employ several workers to help out around the family home.

They had live-in nurses. They even had a butler. Now, if you can imagine just for a second, during this time, which we might have to pull out our history books for, was right around the Great Depression. So it was extremely, and I mean extremely rare, for any family or household to have things like family nurses and butlers. But the Lindbergh family did.

On March 1st, 1932, at around 7.30 p.m., the Lindbergh family nurse, Betty Gow, couldn't find 20-month-old Charles Jr. anywhere. He wasn't with his mother, Anne. He wasn't inside of his crib. He wasn't anywhere.

And Ann, who had just gotten out of the bathtub, told the family nurse that she hasn't seen Charles Jr. since well before she left to use the bathroom. And according to Ann Lindbergh, Charles Jr. should have been inside of his bedroom in his crib. Betty Gao and Ann Lindbergh check the baby's room once again for any sign of the baby.

And that's when they discovered a ransom note. The ransom note was handwritten and was written with, let's say, some pretty poor grammar and spelling throughout. The letter read, quote, and again, I am going to read this exactly how it was written. And I'm going to explain some of the weird grammar parts to it. And it is a little bit difficult to follow.

But here is what the ransom letter said. Dear Sir, have $50,000 $$ at the end, not the beginning, ready, spelled wrong, $25,000 in $20 bills, $15,000 in $10 bills, and $10,000 in $5 bills.

After two to four days, we will inform you where, spelled incorrectly, to deliver the money, also spelled incorrectly. We warn you for making anything public, anything spelled with a D, not a T, or for notify the police. The child is in gut care.

Indication for all letters are signature, I believe is what that's supposed to say, and three holes, end quote. So obviously there are some pretty major mistakes in this letter. I'm actually going to post a picture of the letter to the website ForensicTales.com so that way you can get the full grasp of what this looks like.

And at first, you either assume the person doesn't have much experience or maybe education when it comes to writing, or maybe it's an attempt to try and disguise the author's true identity. Maybe the grammar, the spelling was just a huge way of throwing investigators and the family off track.

So immediately after reading the ransom letter, Ann Lindbergh grabbed the family gun from inside of the house and she started searching around the grounds of the entire place.

And she didn't do this alone because it wasn't quite known whether the kidnapper was maybe still around. So when she grabbed the gun and made her way outside, she also grabbed the family butler, Ollie Watley. And the two of them searched all over the place for any sign of Charles Jr. or the apparent kidnapper.

And during the search, they found impressions on the ground right underneath of Charles Jr.'s bedroom window. It was as if someone had climbed out of it and disturbed the ground around it. And underneath of the window, they also found pieces of a wooden ladder and a baby blanket.

Now, at this point, it's pretty clear that whoever wrote the ransom note had also taken baby Charles Jr. So Ollie, the family butler, immediately calls the Hopewell Police Department and reports the Lindbergh baby missing.

And at this point, they also contact the local family's attorney, Henry Beckenridge, and they also call the New Jersey State Police. Both the Hopewell Police Department and the New Jersey Police show up at the Lindbergh residence and they begin their initial investigation into the baby's abduction. Given the fact that Charles Jr. is only 20 months old,

and the discovery of the ransom note, the police know that if they have any hope of finding the child and finding him alive, they have to act quickly. That same night of the kidnapping, right around midnight, the police called in a forensic fingerprint expert to try and examine the ransom note that was found right there in the baby's bedroom.

You know, the one containing the extremely poor grammar and spelling. The forensic expert was also called in to examine the ladder that was found right outside of the baby's window. Both were called in in an attempt to really try and find any amount of forensic evidence and possibly fingerprints of their kidnapper.

But the forensic expert concluded that whoever kidnapped Charles Jr. was likely wearing gloves. And that's because he couldn't find a single fingerprint either on the ransom letter or on the ladder found right outside of the bedroom window. In fact, there were no fingerprints found anywhere in the baby's bedroom.

There were no fingerprints on the window, on the baby's crib. There was nothing. Police did notice, however, that at the bottom of the ransom letter were two interconnected blue circles around another red circle.

And there was also a hole that was punched right through the red circle. And there were two more holes, one to the right and one to the left of the circle. Now, given the Lindbergh family's fame at the time, the news about the baby's kidnapping spread very quickly. Right after the news broke about the missing Lindbergh baby,

hundreds, and I mean hundreds of people showed up to the Lindbergh residence. And when they showed up, the crime scene wasn't fully secured. So as these people are showing up, they're likely destroying any valuable forensic evidence that just may have been left behind. But it wasn't just random people who showed up at the Lindbergh's house.

Many well-connected people showed up there as well, including several military colonels. The superintendent of the New Jersey State Police was there. Many high society Wall Street lawyers showed up. You name it, they were there to try and help find this missing baby.

Now, at first, many people, including the police and the Lindberghs themselves, suspected that the kidnapper was likely linked to organized crime or they were a member of organized crime themselves. And it was even speculated that whoever wrote the ransom letter, English probably wasn't their first language. Police had actually suspected that the kidnappers likely spoke German.

Charles Lindbergh was a very powerful man in society with a tremendous amount of influence. So essentially, Charles was pretty much in control of the direction of the investigation right from the very beginning. So at the beginning, they decided to contact Mickey Rossner,

a guy who was pretty much known to be well-connected to local mobsters in New Jersey and in New York. Rossner turned to two speakeasy owners, Salvatore Spittel and Irving Bitts, for help. Spittel and Bitts would basically act as the middlemen between the mob and between the police and the Lindberghs. But...

Bits and Spittle weren't the biggest mobsters to offer their help in the kidnapping. A number of organized crime bosses came forward to offer their help in finding the missing Lindbergh baby.

including Al Capone, Willie Moretti, Abner's Wilman. They all offered to help in return to find the missing baby and they offered up money. And we know that especially during the 1930s, mobs had a ton of money. And on a quick side note here,

Al Capone at the time actually told prison officials that he would be more beneficial to everybody if they released him from prison to help and find the missing Lindbergh baby. And I guess not surprisingly, prison officials quickly denied that request. They said, hey, Al Capone, you're staying in prison.

So the day after the kidnapping, U.S. President Herbert Hoover was notified and pretty quickly got the FBI involved in the case as well. Now, at the time of this case, kidnapping wasn't considered a federal crime. So for federal law enforcement to get involved is very rare because if it's not a federal crime, they don't typically have jurisdiction over the matter.

But between the president and the attorney general at the time, who was William D. Mitchell, the federal government authorized the FBI to help. And they also notified the U.S. Coast Guard, the U.S. Customs Services, and the U.S. Immigration Services that they might be called in to help in this investigation. The Lindbergh kidnapping occurred right at the heart of the Great Depression in the United States.

But that didn't stop a huge reward to be put up for Charles Jr.'s safe return. The New Jersey State Police offered up $25,000 and the Lindbergh family themselves offered an additional $50,000, which in today's money is right around $1.5 million. $1.5 million.

So five days after the kidnapping, on March 6th, the Lindberghs receive a second ransom letter at their home. The letter had been postmarked on March 4th in Brooklyn, and it was written on the same paper with those red and blue marks. This letter demanded that the ransom actually be raised to $70,000. And then shortly after that, a third ransom letter arrives.

The third ransom letter told the Lindberghs that a man by the name of John Condon should become the mediator between the Lindberghs and the kidnapper or kidnappers. The letter went on to instruct the family to publish an ad in the newspaper and it provided instructions on exactly how they wanted the ransom money to arrive. So,

Who is John Condon, the one that's mentioned in this ransom letter? Well, John Condon was a retired school teacher who became this well-known personality around the city of Bronx, New York. So John accepts this responsibility and he followed the kidnappers' instructions in the letter.

And he published an ad in the New York American newspaper that read, quote, money is ready, Jafsi, end quote. And Jafsi, if I'm pronouncing that correctly, J-A-F-S-I-E. I think that's correct. But if I am wrong, I apologize. After publishing the ad, he basically then just waited for further instruction from the kidnappers.

So, a meeting between Jafsy and the kidnappers was arranged, and the two would meet a few nights later at the Woodlawn Cemetery in Bronx. According to John Condon, the man stayed in the dark during their meeting, so he wasn't able to get a good look at the man's face.

Condon also said that it sounded like the man might be foreign and that he told Condon that his name was also John. The man told Condon that he was a Scandinavian man and that he was a part of a larger gang. He said the Lindbergh baby was being held on a boat nearby and that the baby was completely safe.

All the family had to do was to get the baby back, was to pay the ransom money. But John Condon had some doubt as to whether or not this was actually the kidnapper. So when he questioned this John guy, he basically promised that he could provide proof that he in fact had the Lindbergh baby.

he offered to provide the outfit that Charles Jr. was wearing the very night of the kidnapping. And a few days after the meeting in the cemetery on March 16th, John Condon receives in the mail the very outfit Charles Jr. was wearing the night of the kidnapping. The package also contained yet another ransom letter.

After receiving the baby clothing and the seventh ransom letter, John Condon publishes yet another ad in the newspaper that read, quote, money is ready. No cops, no secret service. I come alone like last time, end quote. And on April 1st, John receives a letter telling him that it is now time the ransom be paid.

The ransom money was put together and was placed inside of a custom-made wooden box. The money included a number of bills that had gold certificates printed on them. And this is important because these gold certificates were just about to be withdrawn from circulation in the United States.

And the reason why these gold certificates were included with the ransom money was because they were hoping that once these bills were circulated and they were spent by the kidnappers, that this would help identify them.

And they also recorded every single one of the serial numbers on the money, again, in hopes of the bills being identified and eventually leading them back to the kidnappers. On April 2nd, John Condon received a letter from a cab driver that provided instructions on where Condon could meet the kidnappers to drop the money.

When Condon met with the other John, the alleged Lindbergh kidnapper, Condon told him that they only had $50,000 of the ransom money.

But the kidnapper didn't seem to have a problem with this. And the kidnapper told him that the Lindbergh baby would be returned and that the baby was in the hands of two innocent women. Again, saying that Charles Jr. was alive and well. By this point, the Lindbergh family could do nothing but wait for their baby to be returned safely.

They were extremely hopeful that Charles Jr. would be home soon. They paid the ransom money. They were told that the baby was alive and well, that he was in the care of two innocent women. But as the days and weeks go by, hope starts to fade. Days turn into weeks, and the Lindbergh baby has yet to be returned to the family.

And by May of that year, any hope for the safe return of the baby came to a complete end. On May 12th, a delivery truck driver who had just pulled off to the side of the road discovered the body of a young toddler. The toddler's skull had been badly fractured and the body showed obvious signs of major decomposition.

And not to get too graphic with this detail, but the body had already been exposed to animals. And there also appeared to have been some sort of fetal attempt to try and bury the body. The body of the toddler discovered by the truck driver was ultimately identified as the Lindbergh baby, Charles Jr.,

The autopsy discovered that Charles Jr. was likely killed by a massive blow to the skull. After the discovery of Charles Jr.'s body, police suspected that whoever did this was likely someone that the Lindberghs knew. So the first suspect that rose to the top of the list was a woman by the name of Violet Sharpe.

Violet Sharp worked as a servant for Anne Morrow Lindbergh's family, and she became a suspect after she provided false information to the police about her whereabouts on the night of the kidnapping. But before she could really be investigated any further in the case, she actually committed suicide on June 10th, 1932.

Now, I couldn't find any information about why she committed suicide. Many people over the years have speculated that she did it because of the suspicion around the Lindbergh kidnapping. But since then, she has been 100% cleared as a possible suspect. Some people even started to suspect that John Condon may have actually had something to do with the kidnapping.

But again, there really was nothing there to support any type of investigation by the police. The police had a really tough time in the investigation. They really didn't have any leads or new information to base their search on. So they started tracing the ransom money.

And they learned that some of the bills were being spent over in Chicago, some money was spent over in Minneapolis, but the individuals who were actually spending the bills were never able to be located by the police. So over the next 30 months of the investigation, police continued to track and trace bills that were used to pay the ransom money.

And as they did that, they started to notice a pattern. They found that many bills were being spent throughout New York City, and they were being spent specifically along the route of the Lexington Avenue subway. This information gave police hope that they were finally on the right track to find the kidnapper.

Finally, on September 18th, 1934, a bank teller in Manhattan recognized the gold certificates on the bill and the teller recognized it as belonging to the bills given to the Lindbergh kidnapper.

There was also a New York State license plate number which read 4U-13-41-NY that was actually penciled in on one of the bill's margins. And this information actually led the police to a gas station.

Police learned that the gas station worker actually wrote down the license plate right there on the bill because he thought the customer who had handed him the money was acting super suspicious. And at the time, the gas station worker thought that this guy might be trying to pass counterfeit money.

So he wrote down the license plate as a way to track down this person. So police ran the New York State license plate number and they tracked it to a man by the name of Richard Hauptman. Richard was a German immigrant with a pretty extensive criminal record here in the States.

Richard was quickly arrested by the police for possibly being involved in the Lindbergh kidnapping. Because remember, his car's license plate was found on one of the bills that was used in the ransom money. And when police apprehended Richard, he had with him a single $20 gold certificate signed.

And he also had over $15,000 of the ransom money right there in his garage. Richard Hauptman was placed under arrest and questioned for the Lindbergh kidnapping. He told police that the ransom money in the garage actually belonged to a friend of his by the name of Isidore Fish.

According to Richard, Isidore died on March 29th, 1934, and that Richard only learned about the shoebox full of money sometime after his friend's death. Now, the ransom money wasn't the only piece of evidence police found in Richard's home.

also found a notebook that contained a sketch of the same ladder that was found right outside of the Lindbergh's bedroom. They also found John Condon's name, address, and phone number in that same notebook.

But even more troubling, police found a piece of wood in Richard's attic that was later identified to be the same type of wood that was also used in the ladder that was found right outside of the baby's bedroom. Richard Hapman was indicted on September 24, 1934 for extorting the Lindberghs.

And then just two weeks later, on October 8th, he was also indicted for the murder of Charles Lindbergh Jr. Richard was charged with capital murder in the kidnapping and killing of the Lindbergh baby, which at the time in the 1930s meant that if he was found guilty, he would automatically be sentenced to death.

The trial against Richard, the accused Lindbergh killer, became known as the trial of the century. Thousands upon thousands flocked to the Hunterdon County Courthouse in New Jersey to follow every single stage of the trial. During the trial, eight forensic handwriting experts were called to testify for the state.

The forensic handwriting experts testified to the similarities found between the handwriting on all those ransom letters and Richard's very own handwriting. The state also called in Arthur Collar from Forest Products Laboratory.

Arthur testified to the similarities between the wood found in Richard's attic and the wood used to make the ladder to get inside of the Lindbergh's window. Eyewitnesses were also called to testify. One witness said Richard was the man who received the ransom money, and another witness recalled seeing him with those gold certificates.

A co-worker of Richard testified that he was absent the day of the kidnapping and that he had quit the job just two days later. And according to the co-worker, Richard never found another job after that. But he appeared to continue to live a very comfortable life.

Richard Hatman was ultimately convicted of the Lindbergh kidnapping and murder and was automatically sentenced to death in the state of New Jersey. Through his attorneys, Richard maintained his innocence, claiming that he had nothing to do with the kidnapping and murder.

So, his defense team filed an appeal where the case was heard on June 29, 1935 in front of the New Jersey Court of Errors and Appeals, which back in the 1930s was the state's highest court. Sometime while Richard was appealing his conviction, New Jersey Governor Harold G. Huffman visited Richard in his jail cell.

And the governor brought with him a stenographer. Shortly after their visit inside of his jail cell, the governor basically came out and said that he didn't believe the Lindbergh kidnapping could have been committed by a single person. He believed that the investigation was needed to explore this possibility that Richard himself couldn't possibly have done this alone.

By this point, many people were expecting that the governor was going to extend a clemency offer to Richard and save him from the death penalty. But before a decision by the governor could be made, Richard went in front of the New Jersey Board of Pardons to plead for his life on March 30, 1936.

After hearing the case, the Board of Pardons denied Richard's request for clemency. Shortly after the Board's decision, Richard issued a public statement that said that he would no longer pursue clemency and that he basically would accept his fate of death.

While awaiting death, Richard Hapman had the opportunity to confess to the kidnapping and murder in exchange for commuting his sentence to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Essentially, to save his own life, all he had to do was admit to the Lindbergh kidnapping. But,

He turned down that offer and he was ultimately executed by execution by the state of New Jersey on April 3rd, 1936. The Lindbergh kidnapping has been a story told and remembered even all of these years later. And to this day, here in 2020, there still remains several alternative theories to the story.

Many books over the years have actually been written claiming Richard's innocence and really point to the lack of proper police work during the investigation.

And many argue different things like motive. What was the motive besides money? And how exactly did Richard get inside of the Lindbergh's home? Was it just the ladder? Did he have any help? There were just many questions that police and the trial couldn't answer.

And one of these authors, Lloyd Gardner, wrote in his book that Dr. Aratus Hudson, an expert in the field of forensic fingerprints, found no evidence of Richard Hapnin's fingerprints on the ladder, even on places of the ladder that would certainly have been touched by somebody.

And Lloyd Gardner argued that because there was no fingerprints found either on the ladder, on the window that was supposedly the entry point, that Richard couldn't possibly have been involved in the kidnapping. Some of the alternative theories that have emerged over the years are, one, Charles Lindbergh himself was responsible for his own son's kidnapping. Two,

This is because the theory suggests the baby was disabled in some sort of way. So Charles had arranged the kidnapping as a way to get his son over to Germany to be raised by another family because of the disability. A second theory is that Charles actually killed his son by accident, that this was some prank that somehow went wrong.

And lastly, a third popular alternative theory in the case is that Richard, the person actually found guilty of the kidnapping, was part of a conspiracy with two other German men that Richard did not act alone and that somewhere out there two men got away.

Of course, these are simply alternative theories that have sprung up over the years. Again, some of these theories came up from the lack of forensic evidence that was found. Again, the major forensic evidence that was used at trial to ultimately convict Richard was the handwriting. The eight handwriting experts that were called in to testify said

to the similarities that were on the ransom note and to samples of Richard's writing that were presented to the court. And many people in the forensic science community have argued to the validity of handwriting. Um,

There's many people out there that call this a junk science or a junk forensic science. There's many people out there, even people within the forensic science community, that don't believe that handwriting evidence should be admitted in court. It shouldn't be used as evidence. It's just handwriting in general and forensic science is just not a strong piece such as DNA or blood or hair samples or

So many of these theories regarding the Lindbergh kidnapping really stem from the fact that Richard was likely found guilty based on the handwriting as well as the forensic evidence with the latter. But really, the lack of solid fingerprints, DNA, anything like that just wasn't there in the case.

Now, I think the majority of people believe that the person responsible for the Lindbergh kidnapping and murder was in fact convicted and sentenced to death in this case.

As I previously mentioned in the beginning of this episode, Charles and Ann Lindbergh would go on to have five more children together after the murder of their son, Charles Jr. And it was really hard for Charles and his family to live any sort of normal life after the kidnapping. This crime literally captured the attention of the entire country.

Pretty shortly after the death of Charles Jr., the Lindberghs actually moved out of New Jersey and they moved to Europe. And this was probably an attempt to try and just get away from everything that had happened to the family. Charles Lindbergh will always be recognized for his work in the field of aviation. He really was a pioneer in the field and single-handedly started a boom in the industry.

Because of Charles Lindbergh, the United States was now sending mail via airplane and laying the foundation for commercial airplane travel that we know and love today. But because of the tragic kidnapping and murder of his 20-month-old son, Lindbergh will also always be remembered for this crime.

People decades later, still here in 2020, will know who Charles Lindbergh is because of the Lindbergh kidnapping. The Lindbergh kidnapping has inspired countless novels and stories to be based on events themselves. Probably one of the better known adaptations of this story was actually done by James Patterson in his novel Along Came a Spider.

This book was also created into a movie, and a character in his story actually draws inspiration for his crimes based on the Lindbergh kidnapping. If there is a case or a story that you would like covered on an episode of the show, please reach out to me.

You can find the show on Instagram at Forensic Tales or check out our website at ForensicTales.com. You can also email your case suggestions to me directly at Courtney at ForensicTales.com. As always, thank you guys so, so much for listening to this episode on the Lindbergh kidnapping. And please, please stay safe and stay healthy out there. ♪

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